Inside and Out
by noddwyd
Summary: Harry is lost and confused, and something shows up seeming to offer answers. A story where Harry is taken in by someone other than Dumbledore, deciding he wants to have one last apprentice before he passes on. Or is he really dying?


Disclaimer: I don't own HP or any other series/property that appears herein. This is just for fun, not profit.

even in a magical world, miracles can only come from within.

Harry Potter was staring out the window of a two story house which was practically identical to every other house on the street. In other words, it was a boring view. He watched a bumblebee feeding in the neighbor's bushes, buzzing from one flower to the next. He also saw in his periphrial vision a column of smoke rising from a depression in the grass on the back lawn, indicating Mundungus was there to 'keep an eye on him', but he didn't care. With loss and greif behind him and a dark future ahead of him, he had much to think about, so he had no designs about going anywhere.

It all just sounded too farfetched. What possible advantage could he have over Voldemort, a wizard at least fifty years his senior, who had spent many years of his life learning all the ways of magic, without regard for anything but the pursuit of power. 'I'd never catch up to him in power, and I'm not clever enough to outwit him. So what can I do? What good is my magic if I don't know how to use it?'

Harry shut the window to block out the smoke. He walked over to his bed and collapsed onto it, hitting the sharp edge of his advanced transfiguration book. "Ouch! Stupid books!" He threw it across the room to land near his trunk, which held several other books. "There must be a book somewhere that could help me. Millions of them, all over the planet, and all useless!"

As if to spite him, something slammed into his head as he was sitting back down on the bed. It was a book entitled "My Useless Book: Lessons You Couldn't Possibly Learn From Reading".

Harry blinked. 'Dung must be playing a joke on me, heard me yelling from down there.' he went to the window, but the smoke trail was gone.

Harry blinked again. What if it wasn't Dung? What if...? 'Oh, what the hell.' And he started reading, deciding as he often did, to skip over the rather long introduction..

"Lesson 1:

The Sight -

Contrary to popular belief, anyone can become a 'Seer'. In fact, the 'seer' is a seemingly passive observer present within every human construct. There are several major parts that make up an individual. The Mind, The Heart, The Body, The Observer. The first three you probably know. The fourth is a hidden part of the soul which is neutral. It does not react to external stimuli, hence why you may not know about it. The Observer is aware even when the body and mind sleep. It has no regard for opposites such as dark and light, good and evil, pleasure and pain, time-bound and timeless, magic and non-magic. It also does not see the world around it in its individual parts. It sees the entire picture. Hence the 'prophecies' which others do not understand or comprehend, and which are often self-fulfilling. The Observer also knows the true secret to immortality and the Philosopher's Stone.

You may choose not to accept that any of this is true. If so, then this book will dissapear if you close it and place it in the window. If you wish to know more, simply turn the page. "

Harry turned the page.

"Good, a choice well made. So, how do you get in touch with your sight? Well, first you have to accept that it exists, which you just proved by being able to turn the page. I myself was not always a Seer, in fact I wasn't always a Wizard. I Once walked among the muggles, and when I saw another person go by, all I saw was flesh and bone. But I learned to observe. This simple act of observing is one of the greatest abilities all creatures posess. It can transform the mortal man into an immortal being. After some time in my observations I noticed things. I noticed, for example that many of the things around me were connected through me. My clothes obviously. My home. My books. I saw that happy people lived in orderly houses and not so happy people's homes were messier. It's just an observation, but it helped me realize that these things were simply further extensions of these people. Then I expanded my view to include all the people that a person was connected to. Friends, Family, and the emotions and thoughts interconnecting all of these things. And then I began to see the energy that surrounds people, and how their surroundings affect them. And then, one day, I finally realized the truth. I wasn't really seeing individual creatures. I was seeing individual worlds. And worlds within worlds, actually. I was seeing the simple fact that every living thing IS the entire universe, with only a different face, a different vision, a different life. We, as intelligent beings are a lens through which the universe is filtered. I then immediately realized it was being filtered poorly by everyone."

Harry looked up from the book, and wondered if this was all hogwash after all. He looked at the spine of the book to find an author, but only found an odd looking runic mark there. He looked at the cover again only to see similar markings, and not the title he'd read clearly before. Warily, he decided to continue reading, seeing as the book hadn't tried to suck out his soul yet.

"You may have just asked yourself if that is really possible, as I did when it first occured to me. However, once it worked for me in practice, I forgot my doubts. One day you may realize that the entire world exists inside of your own being, that everything is connected by the same thread, the same material. And when that day comes, then, only then, will you be a true wizard. And be welcomed into the realms of light. At that time you will become in many ways larger than the world around you, and at the same time still only a small piece. You will know things that most people don't, the show that is life will be their life until they can expand their senses beyond what they can see and hear, and feel. The sound and fury often blotts out the quiet truth of the universe.

To reach this place of understanding you must always focus on not what you see, but why you see it. You have to look beyond yourself and commune with your other self who is already an immortal being. Astonishingly, this requires no effort, other than the effort of accepting this new part of yourself. Because you do not just observe the world around you, the world around you is an extension of you, part of you, so everything and everyone you see is observed with self acceptance, which is often difficult. One can never See beyond themselves. In order to see things that are lost in time, you must expand your self acceptance to accept the past and the future. Your being is a lens which observes the world. If you observe it with purity and innocence, without the stain of self-image, you can do anything, and see the truth."

Harry didn't quite understand the explanation, in fact, he didn't understand it in the least, but he was intrigued, so he skipped to the end to look for some kind of contact information. He was flipping through the index when someone tapped him on the shoulder. Turning around sharply and drawing his wand in one swift motion he almost cursed an elderly man with long hair and beard somewhat like his headmaster..

"Yes, he always did try to mimic me. Try, being the operative word. He was ever so smug when he told me the Stone had been destroyed." Harry was confused. Stone? Does he mean....?

"Are you Nicholas Flamel? And did you just read my mind?" he asked.

"Good. You're quick enough then. Well, if you really want to learn about all that 'hogwash', then we'd better be off."

Harry still had his wand pointed at the man.

"How do I know this isn't a trick--"

And without warning Harry suddenly got a flash of the man's consiousness, which was so overwhelming and spanned so much time and memory that he nearly collapsed. But he also got the sense that the man was trying to help him, and he lowered his wand.

"I'm only going to say this once. I have your ticket out of this mess you're in, and I'm the only person who can help you. So if you plan to live beyond your seventeenth birthday, we should be going. Time is going to get in our way here." he said gesuring to the small bedroom around them.

Harry thought he should probably take someone this ancient and powerful at his word, and nodded.

He placed his hand on Harry's shoulder and they simply dissolved.

---

And reapeared in the Chamber of Secrets.

Harry thought for a moment about drawing his wand again. Why were they here?

"I see you're confused. Good. That just means you're brain is working. That's the point of this exercise. You figure out why I've brought us here, and when you think you know, come and find me. I'll be in the library."

Harry looked up from the dead basilisk, which surprisingly hadn't decayed. He supposed its magic somehow prevented it, or at least slowed it. "There's a library down here?"

But he was already gone.

Harry stopped to process everything that had happened. He had been rescued from the Dursley's! And by Nicholas Flamel! Does this mean that I'm going to be his new apprentice like Professor Dumbledore used to be? Wicked!' he observed his surroundings, 'So why did he bring me here?

It was still a dark and forboding place. And he could see the exact spot where he had fallen, his blood spilling on the floor as it filled with poison, slowly killing him. And where Ginny had almost died as well, from the poisonous words of the diary. 'So what am I supposed to be doing?' he thought sourly. 'This isn't exactly a good place to think.'

Suddenly he realized he was still holding the book. Maybe he was supposed to read to find the answer?

Lesson 2: Light

I mentioned before the realms of light. Often when you hear of a near death experience you hear people say 'I went into the light'. What they really experienced was a greater aspect of themselves. A higher state of being than the physical world. Simply put, they have seen a glimpse of the world from the seat of the soul, the observer.

Harry paused. He was certain that even when he had been dying on the floor here, he'd never experienced any such thing. His mind had never been on himself and what was happening to him. It was always focused on others and how best to help them. Keep them safe, keep them happy, keep them from hating him. His thoughts almost never turned inward. Until fifth year when he became so angry and selfish. Everything had gone wrong last year, so he had vowed to himself to stop thinking about himself and his situation, but now, reading this stupid book, and doing some stupid exercise, he realized what he was doing now was also counterproductive. If he didn't know or understand himself, how could he help anybody? He had to admit, he had already written himself off. 'Maybe, I don't want to live past my seventeenth birthday, anyway...'

Trying to think of himself as a lens was also ridiculus. If that was true, his lens was so convoluted and dirtied that he was better off blind. Harry had always been told he was worthless. A freak. And then the Wizarding world treated him like he was a freak show. A circus act. The Amazing Boy-Who-Lived. And now he hated himself for his failures of perception that allowed his Godfather to be killed. Self-acceptance was a laughable idea.

And so Harry decided he'd have to give up, there was no way he was going to be able to learn any of this. He wandered off through some of the tunnels he'd not been through before looking for the library.

--------

"I take it you have an answer for me now, Harry?" Nicholas Flamel looked to be gathering up several books he was going to 'borrow' from Slytherin's private library.

"I think so, sir. You brought me to the exact spot where I nearly died over three years ago." Flamel just stared at him, obviously waiting for him to continue.

"The book mentions how near-death experiences can cause visions of something us 'mortals' are not supposed to see. But I thought about it for a while and I realize I never saw anything special. Whether that's because Fawkes saved me so quickly or something else I don't know, but I don't think it was Fawkes."

"Go on."

"....I don't know how far you've looked into my mind, but I have a huge problem with self-acceptance, which this book says is the most important part of this whole idea."

Flamel shook his head. "Exactly, Harry. You are not the first young boy to have so much trouble accepting who they are and where they come from. In fact you are in the company of millions that came before you. Including myself. You see, the journey to becoming a fully fledged Wizard is mostly about self acceptance of all aspects of yourself. Including the mastery of all your magical energies. After all in order to reach self-acceptance you have to first achieve self-realization, that is the realization of all aspects of yourself, including your powers. That is why only a handful of people in the past five hundred years has achieved this. If you can work your hardest, and be willing to learn from me everything I can teach you, you can be the next one. And believe me Harry when I say, once you have achieved enlightenment, there is no one who can stand against you. Not even your so-called Dark Lord."

Harry just stood there, a little confused. "Hang on, I just told you I'm not cut out for this-"

"I'm afraid, Mr. Potter, that you just gave me the correct answer to this exercise, and it may surprise you to know that I may be better equipped to know what you are or or are not capable of than you yourself are. By judging yourself, you create your own limitations and boundries that in reality do not exist. That is the reason that since the beginning of time Masters have come to teach their students, so that we can stop someone like you from destroying your own potential with the butcher knife you tend to call logic. Often thinking things through seems to make them definitive and unchangeable, when nothing could be further from the truth."

It was the first time Harry had seen the man get angry, and it was a little scary to witness. Everything seemed to get colder and he had felt a steady pressure on his skull, as if he was being pulled deep underwater. His words were callous but they helped Harry realize he had been wrong to think it impossible for him to learn. Especially if everyone would die or be subjected to Voldemort's rule otherwise. He couldn't accept failure. It had never been an option.

"Okay, I'll try. I have to do something, it's not like I can just ignore the prophecy."

Nicholas sighed, and again began to speak forcefully.

"Mr. Potter, this has little to nothing to do with the prophecy. I chose you. Not because you are the so-called Chosen One. Not because of your fame. And certainly not because of a half-baked prophecy that is self-fullfilling at best and laughable to anyone that is well-informed. I would have come to you sooner or later regardless. The phrophecy, or rather the fact that Voldemort believes in it so strongly, only bumped up our time table by a few years. I picked you because of the unique circumstances of how you were raised and how you contended with those circumstances quite well. You have great potential Mr. Potter, as a human being, and I have great hopes for you. Now, will you accept becoming my pupil. I will warn you now that you are in for a difficult time if you accept."

"Sir, my whole life has been a difficult time. I accept."

"Then we will enact the contract of Master and Apprentice."


End file.
